this is a true story.

People don't refer to me as Monica from Friends for no reason. For years I've always been more anxious than probably your average teenager or 20-something-year-old, and if you've got something to worry about - I'll usually worry about it for you.

With that being said, imagine anxious-me (alongside with Max) meeting with a financial aid advisor at the U to discuss tuition/loans (edit: unsubsidized loans)/cost of living/etc. over the next four years. About an hour later, as Max and I were sitting at a mall in downtown Salt Lake, and after a realization of the amount of debt we are taking on sunk in, I started to cry. I don't know what came over me, aside from that all too familiar feeling of anxiety, but I cried. In the middle of the food court. In the middle of the day. And the worst part is, I couldn't stop. Max eventually had to grab napkins at the Subway counter because the mascara was streaming --- which thankfully was right around the time I remembered something dear Oprah Winfrey once taught me: "Say thank you!"

It's a lesson I've learned, will continue to learn, and one that I hope to practice a lot in the months and years ahead: Say thank you! As Oprah would say, for the blessings you have, or even as Pinterest put it, to interrupt anxiety with gratitude. 

And maybe just like any other twenty-something year old, or any other wife whose husband is about to begin medical school, or really any other person alive on earth, there are times we'll all feel tremendously uncertain, or for a number of reasons feel inclined to doubt ourself or our circumstances instead of having faith. Whatever the case, when I try to remember the things that I have been blessed with, and I remind myself of the way things have always fallen into place, my faith as well as my gratitude increases. 

I'll jump off the soapbox. But maybe at the end of the day if I work really, really hard on all of this, people will finally refer to me as Rachel from Friends instead. That's the goal.